


like the knights in her songs

by kingandqueeninthenorth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-06
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 20:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1072844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingandqueeninthenorth/pseuds/kingandqueeninthenorth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Petyr reaches down her dress, Alayne flees but her body stays. She thinks of a boy with curly auburn hair and a heart that thundered inside his chest when he saved her from the monsters with swords.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like the knights in her songs

_I_ _look more Stark now than I ever did before,_ she thinks as she pulls her fingers through her hair. All the red is gone, replaced by the dull brown that Arya has. _Or had._

She stares at her reflection in the mirror with dead eyes. She wonders if she looks like Arya now, even though they never shared a resemblance before, or if Robb would recognize her. They had been almost identical once. Tully colored twins, nearly. _I hardly recognize myself._

Nostalgia and homesickness overwhelm her, settling like a rock in her stomach.

_That was Sansa’s life and it is Sansa’s pain. I am Alayne._

\---

Joffrey had been a menace and a brute, but at least Sansa knew what to fear of him. She had learned to expect the blows and bruises.  

Petyr is another problem entirely. He saved Sansa, rescued her from the Lannisters, and brought her back to what little family remained to her. He changed her hair and took her name from her, then force fed her a new identity. He made himself her father, called it _protection,_ and asked for things he had no right to. Then he took what she wouldn’t give. Lady Lysa may not have been kind, but she had been family, and when Petyr pushed her from the Moon Door and called it _protection,_ it left a foul taste in Alayne’s mouth. 

Petyr is cunning and sly and tells Alayne that he is teaching her everything he knows, but she feels more as though she is only learning to swim whilst drowning. 

Petyr steals kisses and Alayne steels herself against them. Her body is there but she is not. She goes away, somewhere within herself. She’s thankful Sansa isn’t here. Alayne is stronger than she ever was. 

\---

When Petyr reaches down her dress, Alayne flees but her body stays. She thinks of a boy with curly auburn hair and a heart that thundered inside his chest when he saved her from the monsters with swords. She had been Sansa then and the monsters had been Arya and Bran with wooden swords.

_Things are different now._

The monsters are real now, and she has met many. A burned face, a golden beast in a crown, and a man who deals in whispers and songs and secrets. 

_What would Robb say if he could see me?_

Petyr’s breath is at her ear, his tongue on the shell of her ear. She shivers. 

_It matters not. Robb had loved Sansa and I am Alayne._

\---

Alayne dared not dream of a saving grace. It was too tempting, too farfetched. Sansa had been loved and no one came for her. Alayne was a bastard and her father was here; there was no one to rescue her. 

The thoughts crept in late at night, when the mask of Alayne was slipping away as she sunk into sleep. She dreamt of the only true knight she had ever known, and he was no knight at all. She left him long ago when he was a boy and she was a girl and there were no demons between them. 

In her dreams, he was taller and stronger and fiercer than when she had seen him last. He took the Vale with ease and swept her away, but not before driving a sword through her father’s heart and twisting.  

But something always soured the sweetness, even in her dreams. Robb say her name and beg a response, but she could answer to nothing but Alayne.

\---

Her father has always been calm and cool in crisis, until now.

The Stark boy is storming the Vale, with a somewhat diminished force behind him. But it’s enough to scare all but Petyr and his bastard daughter from the Eyrie. Petyr refuses to leave though he’s already lost, and he mutters about having come so close only to fall so far.

He swallows too much wine and fondles Alayne between raving rants about what they still have time to do. 

“Let them come,” he says as he tears the bars away from the Moon Door. “They may enter as they like, but this will be their only way out.”

He leaves the heavy wooden door in place, but Alayne can hear the wind pulling at it, howling. 

She keeps a careful watch out the windows, watching tiny lines of dots making their way up and up and up. She feels something stir inside of her that she hasn’t felt in a long time.  She hardly hears Petyr’s voice because her heart is thumping so loud it echoes in her ears.

But it doesn’t go unnoticed when he stumbles a little too close to the Moon Door. Her approach is slow, her footstep sure and steady. She speaks t him with an eerie calmness, requesting that he make the sensible decision and surrender. But he won’t hear of it.

“I won’t lose what I’ve fought to win.”

He beckons her closer, pulls her against him. His lips are on her in a way that feels all too familiar, but she is somewhere else. She reaches behind her, fumbles with the door, until the latch is just loose enough. 

And then she gives him what he wants, a kiss. She kisses him back, as she never has before, turning him so that it is his back to the door. 

And then she forces him against it.

It opens all at once, taking her father and Alayne with it.

\---

It is Sansa who runs to Robb when he enters the Eyrie, the way she had a thousand nights before in her dreams. There is no battle to be won at the Eyrie. The Vale is his, and the castle is hers. 

He looks a true and proper king. So much better than the knights in her songs. 

Her brother’s face is wet, with sweat or tears, she couldn’t say. “ _Sansa.”_

And she can answer. “Yes.”


End file.
